"We Have Lost All Credibility”: Hala Rharrit on Quitting State Dept. & Ending U.S. Complicity in Gaza
"We Have Lost All Credibility”: Hala Rharrit on Quitting State Dept. & Ending U.S. Complicity in Gaza
As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel. We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the ill...
As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel.
We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”
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I really want to know what the actual reason is that we're so boneheaded, so obstinate, so relentless in our "support" for Isreal no matter how fucking crazy they get...
Is it really just more money for defense contractors? It's it really fear of AIPAC? Is it even more fucking absurd and we have actual Christian dominionists trying to bring Armageddon whether it's the Democrats or Republicans?
I just don't understand it...
tldr: the US is still supporting Israel is because Israel has historically been extremely beneficial to US interests.
full:
The reason is that Israel has been a steadfast ally in advancing and defending us interests for half a century, and there is no one else in the Middle East who could play that role half as effectively or reliably.
there was zero chance of the US immediately cutting off aid after 50 years of aid, especially while dozens of other countries have also been providing aid and are still providing aid to Israel.
that was never an option and should not have been an expectation from the public, who only has that expectation because most people have only recently learned about the Palestinian invasion by Israel that's been happening for over half a century.
One year is not much time internationally or diplomatically. it's not much time for intelligence agencies to determine what is happening, especially in the fog of war, and it isn't much time for effects of actions to be seen, no matter what actions are taken.
in israel, The US has an attack dog to deal with US enemies in the Middle East, and now the attack dog has broken its leash and isn't responding to commands. Netanyahu is aging, centralized power, and is acting literally insane.
while I have been loyal, this completely separate nation has saliently chosen to have been loyal, although they were and are under no obligation to be loyal to the demands of the United States, as is now being seen.
it's only been one year, and regardless of what you hear, diplomatically the US is continually trying different tactics to stem the violent efforts of a nation with plenty of resources that has no obligation to listen to the US other than continued financial support, that it has plenty of already and has many other sources of aid.
So to counter basically your whole point: You know how Reagan stopped the Israeli bombing of Beirut in 20 minutes with a phone call in 1982? That's how someone who actually wants Israel to stop does it. Biden isn't stopping them because he doesn't want to, not because his administration is "diplomatically the US is continually trying different tactics to stem the violent efforts of a nation...".
Don't defend genocide support, it's not a good look.
a steadfast ally in advacing and defending us interests
How? At least militarily they've only ever been a liability.
The reason is that Israel has been a steadfast ally in advancing and defending us interests for half a century
Tell that to the crew of the USS Liberty.
there was zero chance of the US immediately cutting off aid after 50 years of aid, especially while dozens of other countries have also been providing aid and are still providing aid to Israel.
Those other dozen countries are only doing because they follow the USs lead. And maybe Germany being hysterical about it instead of learning from its past, that never again must mean never again for everyone..
The reason is that Israel has been a steadfast ally in advancing and defending us interests for half a century
what a load of crap. Israel almost always has right wing leadership and those leaders run far more billboards celebrating their relationship with Putin that with the US. We have no operational bases there. They havent participated in any of our military conflicts. They are not an extension of US power. If they were, we have operations happening out of there.
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Pretty sure OP is asking why the US gov relentlessly supports the genocide, not maga morons.
I'd guess a sizeable bipartisan coalition within the military industrial complex sees it exactly the same way.
They did address that point.
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That's not a point of view singular to the military. It's a pretty stock conservative take.
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Then why include that they're veterans? That'd be like me saying I saw four people, all black, discussing how they were going illegally pass water out in the voting line.
Including that bit doesn't give us any more relevant information. Unless of course I'm trying to push an opinion about black people.
Edit - but->bit
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And yet as an OIF vet I feel weirdly targeted.
Anti-muslim Racism has been pretty common and accepted in the West since even before 9/11 (though it definitelly exploded in the aftermath of it) plus Jews are seen as Whites Of A Different Religion (it's not for nothing that Zionists since the very beginning constantly repeat the "Israel has Western values" mantra).
So for those people the entire reading of the situation, judgment of the actions of the participants and definition of what's an acceptable or unaccetable response is anchored on what their anti-Muslim and pro-White prejudices tell them is the character of everybody in each of the sides involved (or, in simple terms, who are the "good guys" for whom everything is justifiable and the "bad guys" whose actions are always evil).
This is why so many Liberals ended up siding with American Fascists in their defense of an ethno-Fascist (i.e. Nazi-like) regime commiting ethnic Genocide - they too aways judged people based on their etnicity, differing only from one another in the list of "presumed good" and "presumed bad" ethnicities, and in this specific case both shared "Jews" in their list of "good ethnicity" (the Fascists because they saw them as Westerners - i.e. White - and the Liberals because they saw them as Victims following the Holocaust, a view heavilly propagandized by Zionists) and "Muslims" in the list of "bad ethnicity" (curiously both because they're not White, and both via the cultural differences between them and "Westerners", though Fascists and Liberals disliked different elements the culture of "Muslims" - I use quotes because whilst they see it as a single culture, it's not, not even close).
To add on to what others have already said, Israel also supplies the US with a lot of advanced technology and biotechnology. All the cellbrite scanners used to hack into phones come from them, medical equipment like sleep study equipment, drugs, and other things.
Although it seems an area that would be good to just bring in house for national defense in the event a partner nation goes rogue.
We should never have given any of that responsibility to a non NATO country in the first place. We've been tied to this country by lobbyists.
Yeah, it always seemed like a lazy republicapitalist move. Why ever sell out so much security to a vague third party. They have smart people, mad respect to their engineers. No question. But national security being sold to a third party seems like nation-state safety 101.
The worst stuff in the world always comes down to money, power, and bigotry.
It's a sense of guilt about the Holocaust and a complete failure to realize that nations are as individuals. A victim can become a victimizer; an abused can become an abuser.
A little of everything, I think. Plus I don't think Biden has the mental capacity to competently evaluate what's going on. The man is positively geriatric, and he's no Jimmy Carter. But he's useful, in the same way that Dianne Feinstein's staff kept her as a puppet right up until her death. Frankly, it's elder abuse.
I wouldn't put this 100% on Biden though, even in the interview they state that Kamala is 100% on board with the same plan. There is something about the so-called American interest that demands we continue.
I'd put my money on money as that's pretty much always the reason and the military industrial complex always gets what it wants. There's never been an administration that saw a war it didn't like until it goes far enough to risk the party's reelection prospects. They're being blind to the importance of this one this time.
War is the easiest way to facilitate the transfer of public funds into private hands.
The self-proclaimed anti-racists were never against racism, they just had different lists of ubermenschen and untermenschen that the traditional racists.
If one is running around with the idea that people's worth is defined by their ethnicity and that one can presume they're oppressors or oppressed based on that alone they're still a racist and still operating on the same fundamental prejudices about the worth of people as the Nazis.
Because of how the Zionists in Israel worked so much and so successfully to entrenched the idea that Israel represents all Jews, an ethnic group which the new-age-racists collectively deemed "victims" and "good people" (remember, the racism is classifying people on their race, not being positive or negative in your classification: after all, the Nazis too deemed all Arians as better than the rest) what the Israeli Genocide did was put in focus the racism of the Racists passing themselves as anti-Racists when those who they believe represent one of the "good races" started openly doing the very same kind of ultra violent racism as the Nazis.
People who genuinely were against racism reviewed this stance whilst those who still operate on the same racist principles as the Nazis - that people's worth is defined by their ethnicity - came up with all sorts of excuses in defense of "the good race", very much like Nazi supporters defended the Arian race because it was a white race like theirs.
Basically Liberals made it plain as day they're just another kind of Fascist who support all other kinds of Fascism unless they themselves are its target.
Epstein didn't kill himself
I'm just screwing around but you want to talk about fear and power in Washington? Leverage? Who has them tapes?
It's not nuts to say here a lot of politicians are implicated right? I wonder who's gottem?
Not that any exuse needs to exist beyond the rampant corruption, cowardice, and lack of compassion we see daily on garish display
It's not just one reason, it's many reasons, all weighing together. That's pretty standard for how govt decisions are made, an attempt is made to tally up and weigh all the pros and all the cons.
One reason seldom discussed is US reputation as standing by its allies after attacks. The US is allied to all of NATO, almost all of S America in the Rio Convention, along with a slew of other, individual alliances like Israel and Morocco. The idea that if you're an ally and you are attacked, we will help you, is an important one in preserving our network of global allies. We have seldom historically made distinctions that you have to be on the right side of history.
Coupled with domestic factionalist opinions, AIPAC money, MIC money, hamas and Hezbollah themselves being oppressive, genocidal movements, etc etc, balanced against Israel throwing out the two-state solution post Oslo Accords in favor of illegal settlement, Apartheid and now openly advocating for an ethnic cleansing, and there's a lot of weight on the scale pulling each way. Really heavy fucking scale, one of the heaviest in the world, and with a century+ of backstory that is far from one-sided.
Big, big mess basically. Historically epic clusterfuck. Biblical proportions, even.
Hamas and Hezbollah are anti-colonialst resistance movements, not genocidal ones. They exist due to Israel's ethnic cleansing of local populations.
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
During the current war, Hamas officials have said that the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.
Yes, I've heard that rhetoric before. I apply the same skepticism to hamas as I do Israel, though, given both are engaged in outright warfare. Political maneuverings are to be expected during times of war. I am not surprised they would offer a prisoner swap, the only surprise is that they would think any chance exists that Netanyahu might actually agree, after given such a clear casus belli and opportunity to enact his long-term goals.
Ultimately, language like this is legitimate cause for suspicion, though: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/
Additionally, you can point to the indiscriminate attacks on Oct 7th against nonmilitary targets to give evidence to their lack of distinguishment between Israeli people and the Israeli military. It's not just language about the destruction of a country of people, they exhibit actions to back it up.
Ultimately, it does not matter why they want to destroy Israelis, that is not a pre-requisite to fighting against occupation. Do Ukrainians seek to destroy Russia? Or merely battle its military to liberate their land? This is a key distinction, the following of the laws of war.
Hamas certainly did commit war crimes on Oct 7, and many of the attacks were indiscriminate.
This kind of violence does not come out of nowhere, Israel has committed this level of violence on the population of Gaza multiple times, on top of the daily violence of the blockade and occupation. The occupier does set the level of violence in Colonialist conflicts. It's still unjustifiable for both sides, but the material conditions the occupier subjects the occupied to are critical to understand.
When people are subjected to the daily violence of Apartheid for generations, they will inevitably use violence to fight back. The underlying cause of all this violence stems from Zionism (Ethnic Cleansing, Settler Colonialism, Apartheid), and the only way to end the violence to to end the underlying cause.
Quotes
Historian and professor of genocide studies Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that "many commentators rightly pointed out that Hamas committed a genocidal massacre", while also highlighting the killing of Arab Israelis and Bedouins during Hamas' attack as evidence that it may not have been "group selective". He suggested that the attack might fall under the category of "subaltern genocide", drawing comparisons to the mass killing of pied-noirs in Algeria. Political scientist Abdelwahab El-Affendi refuted the "subaltern genocide" thesis, pointing to a "near-consensus" in the field of genocide studies that "genocides are almost invariably perpetrated by states", which does not apply to the Gazan enclave. He stated that the attacks were consistent with terrorism and mass violence, but that the taking of hostages for prisoner exchanges indicated that the intent of the attacks was not genocidal.
By contrast, British academic Omar McDoom wrote in the Journal of Genocide Research that comparisons between the Holocaust and 7 October are indicative of a pro-Israel bias in sections of the Holocaust studies community. McDoom argues that the comparison is "problematic" because "the Germans were not an occupied and oppressed people. And Gaza is not a powerful, expansionary state. To the contrary."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel
Infographics
Your underlying causes do not go very far back in time. The first Zionist settlers purchased their land from Palestinians and lived peacefully alongside them. While I understand your desire to focus solely on material causes, one must also take ideology and religion into account as factors. Humans experience emotions, and emotions do not always have material causes.
Early Zionist settlers who did live side by side with the native Palestinian people did report that they were received peacefully, that is true. But the land purchases were not, that began the forced displacement.
The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba
The 1940s are still half a century after the first settlers arrived. Purchasing land from Palestinians is not forcibly displacing them.
You're starting your history at around the time Israel was founded, and the Jewish community had grown powerful. That is not the beginning, the beginning was 50 years earlier. Doing this is very common in propaganda.
I'm referring to the 1920s - 1930s
Both the Zionist buyers and Levantine companies knew that many Palestinian Arabs still owned homes, olive groves, mills, warehouses and fields in the N-shaped region. They offered money to the families that came forward. But, Zionists forcibly evicted them if they refused compensation or to sell their land.
From 3rd link
Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords.
In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders.
From 4th link
Forcible 'Transfer,' Ethnic Cleansing, has been central to Zionist thought since the 1880s
Quote
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
This still deals with Israeli atrocities after they became strong enough to commit them, and ignores much context. For instance, how Theodor Herzl proposed his Judenstaat to Jewish leaders of his time and was rejected, due to the dangers his ideas posed to existing Jewish settlements in the region.
This ignoring of key details, and focusing in on only evidence that, in isolation, supports a certain narrative is not conducive to a healthy understanding and discussion of events. This is, again, a common feature of propaganda, and we should be wary of it in any conflict.
Even the 1920s are not the beginning, if we want to understand this conflict, we should be paying attention to the earliest influx of Jewish settlement, which began in the 19th century, not the 20th century. Without understanding of the earliest atrocities, we lack important context for the environment that led to our future.
Here's some more context. None of this changes the realities of Zionism as a Settler Colonialist Ideology.
Quotes
It is only we, with hindsight, who can appreciate the significant change of orientation that occurred within Zionism; one doubts whether the urban leadership of the Palestinian community knew of these developments. The movement became a more potent factor in Palestine’s affairs after Herzl’s unique success in allying it to Britain, and his failure to persuade the Zionists to agree to settling in Uganda.
To the end of his life, Herzl believed that Zionism could not succeed without the blessing of a European power. We can see now that he was correct, and that he chose the right ally in Britain. It was a logical choice given the recent British interest in the Middle East, a colonialist interest that began with the occupation of Egypt in 1882, but did not end there. The British residents in Cairo, and an expansionist school of thought in the Colonial Office at home, had looked to Palestine as a future British acquisition, should the Ottoman Empire collapse.Such a collapse was now a feasible scenario, once dreaded by British policy makers as a formula for a European war, but by the 1880s one to which Britain itself contributed with the occupation of Ottoman Egypt. If the Jews, like the Anglican missionaries, could ease British expansion into the land of Palestine, they should be welcomed. The pro-Zionist bent in British Middle Eastern policy at the end of the nineteenth century was produced by a mixture of new colonial perceptions of global reality and old theological concepts connecting the return of the Jews to Palestine with the second coming of the Messiah. Herzl succeeded in inflaming the British colonialist and evangelist imagination when he offered the British government the opportunity to turn the arid area of El-Arish, near Gaza, into a Zionist oasis. All that was lacking, he explained, was a canal bringing fresh water from the Nile. However, the British governor of Egypt, Lord Cromer, an ardent utilitarian, was not impressed by these visions, and his objection led to the plan’s demise.
Herzl was now desperate. He tried another avenue, the last before his death in 1904. He attempted to enlist British help in installing a temporary Jewish state (i.e. one that would eventually be moved to Palestine) in British Uganda, an offer which was conceived originally in Whitehall. He proposed Uganda for tactical reasons, but his offer seemed to many in the movement a betrayal of Zionism. Leading ‘territorial Zionists’ foiled the Uganda plan. After all, it was Herzl who had sanctified Palestine by defining Jewish nationalism as Zionism, irrevocably connected to settling Palestine (Zion). He had created a yardstick by which patriotism or loyalty to Jewish nationalism would be judged. Any unpatriotic act was dealt with as in any other national movement – with contempt and hostility.9 Something of the new Zionist vitality and energy must have left a mark on those in the urban elite interested in politics. This is probably why the Palestinian protests against Zionism became more conspicuous after 1904 and were quite well orchestrated by Palestine’s few representatives in the Turkish parliament, re-opened in 1908 after being suspended by Abdul Hamid. These representatives tried, sometimes successfully, to pass legislation curbing Jewish expansionism in Palestine. The settlers continued to arrive, however, and laid the foundations for the Zionist community. They would meet serious opposition only after the end of the First World War.
Read Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha if you want the history of the region since before British Occupation.
Read The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 by Nur Masalha if you want the details about Zionism and it's origins.
Read A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe if you want the history of the region since the 1800s (this is the book I quoted, pg 89)
Additionally, you can point to the indiscriminate attacks on Oct 7th against nonmilitary targets to give evidence to their lack of distinguishment between Israeli people and the Israeli military.
The crucial fact that is always left out of this - by the Israeli military's own admission, using their own numbers, the IDF and Hamas have the same collateral damage ratio. Hamas killed 2 civilians for every military member they killed on October 7th. This is the same civilian to military kill ratio that the IDF claims in their own numbers. Hamas is literally just as effective at avoiding civilian casualties as the IDF is.
Numbers 2 and 3. Israel is lucrative, but not "Piss off numerous other customers" lucrative.
It's pretty simple.
There is an election in November and noone wants to anger the power AIPAC lobby or Jewish voters.
theres about 7.5 jewish voters split between republicans and dems. Theres about 3.7 arab american voters which are part of the 4.45 million muslim voters. Jews arent a voting block of a size to be overly concerned about. And the dems probably lose more votes supporting israel than they gain. So this is about money, not votes.
Fair enough. Didn't realise there were so many Arab voters.
I agree. It is about money.
AIPAC is very well funded and powerful.
I think it's because humans tend towards being machines for making the world worse, as evidenced by the human world they've made for themselves.